


Averno

by deemn



Series: The Light in Autumn [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-25
Updated: 2013-01-25
Packaged: 2017-11-19 11:47:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/572928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deemn/pseuds/deemn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regina dreams of cocoa, pine trees and poetry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Orcus

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: Don't own, don't profit.
> 
> NOTE: Set post-curse, after Emma and Snow fall through the hat. Follows canon loosely, with one notable exception: no Hook. I couldn't figure out how to properly involve him.
> 
> Written entirely because I have so many feelings about Regina Mills.

Where does the voice come from  
that says suppose the war  
is evil, that says

suppose the body did this to us,  
made us afraid of love—

 _Crater Lake_ , Louise Gluck

* * *

It starts a week after—after they’re gone.  They, Emma Swan and Snow White, and Henry.  Henry is gone because they are gone, and _they_ are gone because they were stupid, and sometimes if she thinks about it too long, all that rage—the kind that draws her spine up straight and feels like coming back to an old lover’s embrace—bubbles up into her throat.  Except without Henry, it just feels like nausea, like vertigo.

It’s been a rough week, so when she finally dreams, she thinks it must just be a product of the week and all the images in her head and all the dead ends they hit.  As far as dreams go, it’s completely unremarkable; she sits at the window table of the diner with a mug of coffee and a book of poetry.  She knows it’s poetry because she knows it; she can’t read anything, all the letters blur and jumble together and leap off of the paper, but she knows it’s poetry.   It’s been so, so long since she’s done just this: sit still and read pretty words.  Twenty eight years in this world and she has yet to find anything that quite compares to a good poem and the right drink.

Time passes—the light through the window changes color, warms slowly—and she turns pages and somehow, someway, doesn’t feel anymore.  All the ordinary despair doesn’t touch her here, and she’s just begun to relax when there’s a small sound across from her, a timid “Huh.”

She’s not alone, and her subconscious has a truly warped sense of _relaxing_ if it thinks conjuring up Emma Swan fits with the overall theme.

It takes no effort at all to simply turn her eyes away from the chair opposite her and return to the book she can’t actually read.  Following the warping letters and their dance around the page is sufficient distraction, and when she looks up again, it’s because the light has shifted to late afternoon gold and she has managed to pass an entire afternoon with Emma Swan without a fight.

A newspaper and a cup of cocoa are in front of Swan, and when Regina looks up, Swan does, too.  On actual eye contact, Regina realizes that while Swan’s clothes and hair are in their regular shoddy condition, her face—her skin—is mottled by bruises, split and scraped in some places.  She doesn’t look to be in pain, though; she appraises Regina as frankly.  Regina is sure that their frowns are mirror images.  As soon as Swan goes to open her mouth, though—she _would_ ruin the peace—that golden light gets paler and paler, and when Regina looks up from the formica table she sees only her bedroom ceiling.  

Her bedside clock tells her she has fifteen minutes before her alarm goes off, and she preemptively shuts it off.  With no ten year old to rouse and ready, her entire morning schedule is different.  She could sleep for an extra thirty minutes every day, but changing the alarm… is not an option.

Forty-five extra minutes today, however, means that maybe she can find something like relaxation before Dav—James—no, David’s inevitable check-in at noon.  So she pushes back the covers, wraps her robe around her body and slips downstairs—quietly, because she will never not move quietly in this house, whether her son is sleeping here or not—to her study, to her books, to a thin volume of pretty words that has always spoken to her more than it should.  

It works.  It works for the first time in years.  When David knocks—four heavy thumps in an even staccato—at noon, she’s only just finished dressing, only just had her coffee.  For a moment, when she opens the door with her hair still damp at the roots and realizes she has no progress to report, she feels a flash of guilt.  Poetry over her promise to Henry?  It fades, though, because it feels like maybe, maybe, maybe, if she can get back to that quiet place in her head, she can be as she was before: the most powerful, the most alone.

She spends the afternoon researching, and enough hours after sundown to assuage that last remaining sliver of _you should do better_.  When she rinses toothpaste out of her mouth, when she tugs the drawstring of satin pajama pants tight, when she finally slips between the sheets again, it feels like she will do better.  Tomorrow and the day after, and the day after that, every day until she brings them back.

So when she closes her eyes and finds herself sitting in the diner again, with Emma Swan across from her _again_ , she doesn’t entirely understand what her subconscious is doing.  She got the hint already: center, regroup, don’t fuck this up.  She really doesn’t need a second run at… at whatever this is supposed to be, because whatever it is _hurts_.

Because Emma Swan gave Henry his smile, and that particular scrunch to his nose when he concentrates, and their eyes are set the same, and Henry is _gone._   Not in the way where she can even properly grieve about it—if he’d been sucked into the portal like Swan—but in that horrible way where she can reach out and touch him and still not have him with her.  Where he can call her and give her hope and then just not be there.

Maybe it’s that, the idea that Henry is here but not here, that Emma Swan is Henry but not Henry, that Swan is here but not here, which makes her start to talk.  Because even if Swan is just a figment, Regina needs to say this.  Needs some version of Emma Swan to understand, to see that curse-breaking is _breaking_ for a reason.  That she’s blown up the whole world, Regina’s whole world, and not merely the bubble of Storybrooke but _Henry_.  That the woman shooting up on rage and despair who wanted to destroy a whole world, to hold misery around her for eternity, is not and could not be the same woman who held a three-week-old baby in her arms and swore to love him forever.  That all she’s been for the last ten years is broken-hearted and overjoyed and desperately confused, and curse-breaking has left her with nothing but pieces.

“The first time I held him, he was asleep.  Just… completely asleep.  He’s always been a heavy sleeper, I guess.  Everyone told me I was so lucky, that he would sleep for five hours at a go as a newborn.  So when they brought him, when I held him, I didn’t—I guess we didn’t really meet, you know?  Not until a few hours after they left, and his tiny little mouth opened up in this… yawn, this adorable bubble of a yawn, and then he opened his eyes and…”

Swan is staring at her, absolute fear in her eyes.

Regina keeps going.  She has to keep going.  “Babies, they can’t see very far, not for their first few months, so I didn’t even know if he really knew I was there, but… but he’s always been able to look at someone and get to them.  He just, he crawls right in when you think he’s just looking around, and… he opened his eyes and he looked at me and that was it.  Nothing else mattered.  He’s always been everything—magic, power, fear, love.  He’s always been everything.”

The fear—and even afraid, those eyes are the same shape, wide and still with an extra crinkle under the left eye—morphs, and Swan turns her head away, as if to shake it off.  Regina thinks that maybe, for a moment, she saw tears.  “I wondered.  All the time.  I tried so hard not to but I wondered.”  Swan’s voice is rough, like dehydration and smoke, or maybe emotion.  It’s always impossible to tell.

But Regina understands, nods at her.  “You wanted to know if he was as perfect as you thought he could be.”  And she smiles— _smiles_ —at Emma Swan, because Henry is so much more than Regina ever dreamed of, so much more than Swan could have ever hoped for.  “His first word was ‘uh-oh.’  He was learning to walk at the same time, and every time he’d fall, I’d say ‘Uh-oh!’  You know, just to keep it light, to give him something to focus on instead of the fall.”  And she has to pause, just to chuckle for a moment, because baby Henry with his chubby legs and million-mile smile had, once or twice, looked back at her and promptly sat down, just to hear her say it.  “So I was feeding him, and he just looked right at me, like he knew exactly what he was going to do, and he knocked the whole bowl of applesauce right off the highchair—took the spoon out of my hand with it—and his smile…  And then he said ‘Uh-oh!’ like it was the greatest thing he’d ever done and—“

Her voice cracks into a sob, and she turns her head away sharply, puts her fist over her mouth to hold it in.  _Hold it in_.  She can’t do this.  She can’t.

“I hate you for this.”  The whisper is out before she realizes it, and she sounds worse than Swan, sounds like a cigar a day for ten years and whiskey nights.  “I hate you for this.  My son is gone because you are gone, and you cannot possibly… do you know how empty everything is, without him?  You never—you never had him _in_ your life, had him _remake_ your whole life, nothing makes sense without him, I don’t make sense without him, do you understand that?”

She can’t do this and she is, tears burning behind closed eyes and her hand still trying to stifle the words and the hiccuping sobs. She can’t do this and she is, because goddamn Emma Swan gave her everything and took it away.

Goddamn Emma Swan, sitting across the table looking straight at her and flexing her fingers like it might rain, is God to Regina’s whole world.  Creator, Savior, Destroyer, and so, so cold.

“I was in jail for another two months, after he was born.”

Regina looks up before she can help herself; she can’t even properly see Swan through the salt in her eyes, but she’s looking anyway.

“Jail is, um, pretty empty.  There’s not… I talked to him, for nine months.  I talked to him and sang to him and told him every dream I’d ever had about my birth parents and about all the places I wanted to go as soon as I got out.  I never once said he wasn’t going to be coming with me because—“  She cuts herself off and Regina is thankful.  Thankful, thankful, grateful to goddamn Emma Swan.  “It’s not the same, at all, and I know that.  But… I think, I think I can understand.  What you’re feeling.  The… the base of it.”

Regina wipes at her tears and tries to get her lungs to just calm down and when she looks up again, her bedside clock says 4:00 AM and she can finally, finally cry.

* * *

After Daniel— _God._

After Daniel.

After Daniel, she drinks enough coffee to stay awake for two straight days, and when David comes in for his check-in on Wednesday, her hands are shaking from the caffeine.  Perpetual genius that he is, he assumes it’s an after-effect of magic, talks to her like she’s _using_ again, and then sends Archie over.

Pongo sniffs out the backyard, staying well away from her apple tree—smart dog, learned his lesson five years ago—and Archie sits with her on the back porch.  Actually _on_ it, not on the lounge chairs or the swing, but on the steps, side by side.  He looks at her like she’s a stranger and she can’t blame him; when was the last time anyone in this town saw her in faded jeans and a baseball tee?  She’s fairly certain no one knew she owned jeans.  Well, Graham knew, but Graham _was_ jeans and a baseball tee: a comfortable secret.

Daniel would have told her she looked best in jeans, would have wrapped her up in love so comfortable— 

“I haven’t done magic.  I just… I don’t want to go to sleep.”

Archie nods, takes a sip of the coffee she’d offered and puts it down with a wince.  “That would explain the rocket fuel.”  But neither of them smile.  “Is it because there’s an advantage to being awake or a disadvantage to being asleep?”

She wants to retort that she’s heard smarter questions from illiterate toddlers, but then she realizes that it actually is a relevant distinction.  “Disadvantage to sleep,” she murmurs.

“A sedative—“

“No pills.”

He understands.  “Don’t drink any more coffee.  Your level of exhaustion should be sufficient to keep REM cycles short.  Too short for dreams.”  She wonders if she’d been too hard on him when he was just Dr. Hopper, or if becoming Jiminy again added something likable to his personality.  “I’ll tell Henry it’s nothing to worry about, just sleep deprivation.”

It _hurts_.  “Henry… is worried?”

Archie doesn’t look at her, just whistles for Pongo.  “You’re his mother.”

She falls into bed at eight and when she rolls over into the bright light of the diner and a mug of hot chocolate, she hates Archie.  Swan has a bruise below her elbow and Regina realizes, belatedly, that the iconic and insufferable red jacket is gone.  Was it there last time?  She can’t quite remember; Swan is always a hazy overlay of denim and leather and scorn.

Right now, she’s green cotton and gray sweatpants and wide-eyed and silent.  She smells like pine sap and smoke.  Regina wishes she wasn’t anything: gone, relevant, charmed, anything.  She wishes Swan would speak so that when she herself starts talking, babbling, weeping openly, she doesn’t feel like such a fool.  It’s just—she needs to _talk_.  She needs all of this to _leave_ her and if it takes talking to her nemesis in dream-form, then she’ll do it, anything for the maelstrom of pain to leave her alone.

Swan gazes at her through all of it with that look, that look, that Henry-on-Father’s-Day look of uncertainty and discomfort.  She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t interrupt with sighs or gasps, but when Regina chokes, rasps out _love again_ , there is the faintest touch to her hand, the tips of two fingers brushing over her knuckles.

She wakes up scratching at the back of her hand, right above where Daniel’s ring used to sit.

The next night, and the next, she talks.  The diner never fills up with anyone else, neither Ruby or Granny come by to top up their drinks, but Swan is there and the coffee is always hot and there’s something… _nice_.  To go from talking to Archie about how she’s fucked everything up and how she doesn’t—no, how she _can’t_ be that woman, ever again, to talking at Swan about Henry when he was four and took crayons to the dining room walls or when he was seven and convinced that he could dance like Michael Jackson… it’s nice.  It’s restorative.  It almost makes not having Henry to cook for and pick up after less unbearable.

It takes until that fourth time for dream-Swan to ask questions, and once she starts she doesn’t stop.  She asks after every single moment that Regina’s ever cherished with Henry and pays attention through all the moments that had overwhelmed her.  Teething, and potty-training, and the chicken pox, Swan listens to all of it.  In the morning when Regina sits out on the porch steps and watches the sunrise break up the mist, she gets it, finally.  She’s not the only one who loves Henry the most, and that is a good thing.

When David knocks on the door at noon, she actually invites him into the study to sit, offers him a glass of juice and tells him what she’s worked out so far.  It’s all theory, breaking apart the old runes to isolate the elemental components of magic, and it mostly seems to sail over his head, but at some point he leans forward and almost touches her hand.  “So you think that if you can understand the new rules of magic, here, you’ll be able to—“

“Work within them to open a portal directly, or to open a series of portals.  With more stability than by using a hat or guessing at a spell.”

He actually smiles at her.  “Good.”

It’s almost a struggle for her to ask, but she manages it: “How are Henry’s riding lessons coming along?”

There is an awkward, stilted silence, and then David grins.  “He’s managed to work all the way up to putting a rope harness on his pony.”

Her eyes flicker to the statue on the mantelpiece, and she realizes that she hasn’t gone riding since Henry brought Swan to town.  “When—when he finally mounts,” and she stops.  “Do you think I could be there?  Just to—I’m a—“

“You prefer the bay, right?”

She nods, tries to tamp down the smile.  “Sancho.  Yes.”

“I’ll have him saddled and ready.”  He leaves before she can figure out how to say thank you.

Research in the afternoon goes quickly and deeply into the properties of magnetism and M theory, and in the old spell book she finds three base runes that keep coming up, and it feels like _something._ Progress, maybe.  Hope, at least.

* * *

“I’ve—I’ve never had this, before.”

Swan quirks an eyebrow and lowers her mug and Regina is tempted to point out the line of whipped cream on her upper lip, but if dream-Swan can be as inelegant as real-Swan, she wants to enjoy it.  “A human conversation?”

Regina picks a sugar packet out of the dish and flicks it at Emma’s face without comment.  “Someone… as invested in Henry.  To share things with.”  It doesn’t sound at all like _partner_ but that’s what it is, isn’t it?  And it’s pathetic, because she is Regina, she can demand a second sunrise should she please, but she resorts to dream conversations in a hick-town diner with an ex-bounty hunter.

She isn’t quite sure how she’s supposed to ever love again when she needs to fabricate someone to merely trust.

But Swan looks at down at her mug and nods.  “Maybe this is what we should have been doing all along.”

“Maybe this is what we could have been doing all along if you hadn’t taken a chainsaw to my tree.”

“Lady, did you miss the part where you tried to frame me and run me out of town?”

Maybe the reason her dreams keep going like this is because Emma Swan is, at the very least, guaranteed repartee.  Sometimes when she goes to Archie’s office, her voice cracks from twenty-four hours of disuse.

So she waves a hand as if to deflect that whole frame-job detail.  “You were a threat.  Training kicked in.  Really, you were the invading party, I should think the obligation to be non-threatening would fall to you.”

There is nothing intimidating about a glare with a whipped cream mustache.  She chooses to keep this information to herself.

* * *

Henry’s hair feels rougher than usual but smells like cedar, and it’s such a relief to touch him, to put a hand to his shoulder and know that he’s real, that she can almost forget about the part where Rumplestiltskin is standing in front of her and holding her son’s safety in his imp-hands.  

She doesn’t understand why Rumple is suddenly _giving_ and not _dealing_ , but she sees the burn when Henry raises his hand to take the amulet and it suddenly isn’t as pressing to know why, just that he is.  It still leaves her feeling nauseous, though.

Henry puts the amulet away and sits on the couch to let her treat the burn, first with a thin layer of aloe, then a gauze pad and a loose but secure wrapping.  “Mom?” he says suddenly, and she wonders if this is what it feels like to have a heart put back in a chest.

“Yes, Henry?”

“Are you okay?”

She thinks of her baby boy who cried when she came home with paper cuts.  She thinks of her son stepping into the afterburn of a fireball.  “I’m trying to be,” she whispers, and kisses his rougher, cedar-spiced hair.  “I’m trying.”

* * *

Regina tells Swan that Henry is learning to ride, and sword-fight, and that he’s grown a whole shoe size and God help her, if he grows any more before December—

Emma laughs and cuts in, “What are you going to do, cast a shrinking spell?”

Regina just _stares_ , because she’s fairly certain that the laugh and the quip are malice-free, and she’s never—how does that even work?  And then she thinks about a fully-grown Henry with child-size feet, and there is a strange feeling in her throat and a strange sound in her ears and she’s _giggled_.

Swan laughs again, like she’s just seen a particularly clever magic trick, and for the first time since Henry’s rendition of “Thriller,” Regina laughs until she cries.

* * *

If she starts talking research over with Emma, it’s only because the only person equipped to be her sounding board about magic is herself.  So talking to herself, filtered through Swan’s unique lack of couth, is the best way—the only way—to think deeper and better and smarter.  And if there’s something magical in explaining magic itself, well, that’s a bonus.  An unlooked for but appreciated bonus. 

It works, to an extent; she loses a whole night on explaining the way borders work with membranes, and atoms and how magic is, simplified, a specialized electron and oh, right, electrons, well—but dream-Swan is smart and understands quickly and having to go back to basics opens up a whole new idea.

Namely: perhaps it is not about _creating_ a portal but finding and restoring one already in existence.

The one thing she can safely say she knows about magic in this world is that it doesn’t work right.  The easiest way she knows how to explain it to Emma is that it’s like trying to transmit from inside a microwave; the signal gets twisted because of the properties already in play.  Swan asks if taking down the cell tower will help, and she sounds so much like Henry, looks so much like him, that Regina simply shakes her head and keeps theorizing. 

She reads more and eats less because somehow, the idea of sleeping less—of perhaps only getting twenty minutes with Emma and not one hundred and twenty—it doesn’t work.  It doesn’t gel with anything else she can sacrifice.  Cooking takes time and isn’t the type of chemistry she needs to waste time with.

Swan tells her she looks like shit—verbatim—and Regina just sighs, waves it aside.  She _knows_ she needs to eat more than fruit and slightly stale bread, but if she and Emma can just figure out what these three rune bases _mean_ —

“So, my mom… she’s got a kind of a warrior-princess thing going on…?”

Regina rolls her eyes, because maybe she’s paid too much attention to real-Swan if dream-Swan can sound so identically inane.  “Would you like to decide if that’s a question or a statement, Miss Swan?”

Emma huffs, crosses her arms.  “Statement: my mom is a badass.”

Way too much attention.  “She is… scrappy,” Regina acquiesces.

It is quite a concession, in her eyes, but dream-Swan just quirks an eyebrow again.  “Does scrappy really apply against ogres?”

Ogres.  Regina doesn’t miss them—brutish and foul-smelling and never more than primal.  How they’d gone to organized war, twice, is beyond her.  “Ogres are overestimated.  Ferocious, yes, but appallingly easy targets.”

Emma snickers, and Regina closes her eyes in preparation for what she _knows_ is coming.  “Don’t you mean _ogre_ -estimated?”

When real-Swan gets back, Regina is going to wear earplugs, constantly.

* * *

“I’m just wondering, you know, if it’s something like—like what, like cell tower interference?  Maybe you have to go somewhere different, somewhere _not_ Storybrooke.  I know you can’t leave but—“ Swan stops talking, wipes at her mouth quickly.  “What?  Do I have whip—Regina?”

She doesn’t want to ask because she knows the basics and she doesn’t want the dull ache in her stomach to fill in the blanks.  She doesn’t want to ask but she does anyway, because.  “How bad was it?”

Emma’s shoulders drop, come back up slowly, like adjusting to a new weight.  “Fourteen homes in sixteen years.  Longest stint besides the first three years, two years, third and fourth grades.”

She shouldn’t ask, she doesn’t want to ask, she asks.  “Why?”

“Light-haired, light-eyed little girls don’t do well in the system.”  She doesn’t know what that means but it makes that ache flare up into a slow-roiling nausea.  “Early on, a few people, they thought I’d be some… angel-child.  No kid’s an angel all the time, even the best ones, and I wasn’t good.  I wasn’t a bad kid, but…”  Emma looks away, twists her hands around each other.  “You don’t learn to trust anybody, not the way I went.  So it was hard.  I wasn’t an angel and I wasn’t easy so I’d go back.”

Regina doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, doesn’t breathe.  “And later?”

She hates that Swan can always gauge exactly when she’s at her most genuine point, always knows exactly when to look her in the eye.  “I liked to fight back.”

Regina feels sick, because _fight back from what_ , and _light-haired, light-eyed little girls_ and she is sick, she is sick all over the next chair, all over the right side of the bed.  She tastes sour and acid in her mouth and she makes it to the bathroom before she throws up again.

* * *

She’s cleaned up her bed and her clothes and herself by the time the sun comes up, and she’s stopped shaking by the time noon and those four thumps roll around.

She opens the door to David and Ruby, and stacks of Tupperware.  “Um?”

Ruby clears her throat and Regina steps back, allows them both in.  “You’re not eating,” Ruby says simply, and David leads her towards the kitchen.  “Granny packed up some leftovers.”

Regina trails behind them both, perplexed.  “I—I am perfectly equipped—“

“Save it.”  Ruby opens the refrigerator, shoots Regina a pointed glare, and starts stacking containers on the empty shelves.  “The big two are lasagna and pot roast.  Mashed potatoes, green beans, some type of stir-fry that probably has tofu in it, and two containers of apple crumble.  Should last you a few days, I’ll come back with more.”  Ruby picks up a half-empty tub of hummus, sniffs at the edge of the lid and makes a face before trashing it.  “Gross, Regina.”

She can’t remember ever having a full-fledged conversation with Ruby, much less reaching a first-name basis.  “I—I don’t understand.”

Ruby and David trade glances, and he bows out of the room; princely habits die hard, apparently.  “You’re overworking yourself in an attempt to get your arch-nemesis and her daughter back for your son.  It’s not enough to make up for what you did to other people, but… I had twenty-eight years without fear, here.  And I wouldn’t have any to look forward to if I didn’t have those behind me.  So, lady, I think you’re crazy and in need of some serious rehab, but I’m not about to let you starve to death.”

Regina sits, heavily, at the kitchen table.  She closes her eyes, tries to figure out what she can say here—what would Swan say?  Something asinine and sarcastic, probably.  “Oh.”  And significantly better than _oh_.

But Ruby grins at her.  “Hey—do you have cocoa, by any chance?”

She starts to point to a particular cabinet, then shakes her head.  “No—I—I ran out, before—before the curse broke.  And Henry hasn’t been back and I don’t really—no.  I don’t.”

It suddenly feels like she’s said something _wrong_ , because there’s something hard in Ruby’s eyes now.  “Really?”  All she can do is nod, because there’s something just higher than primal in the bones of Ruby’s face.  “Because you smell like cocoa and pine trees.”

It’s better than smelling like stomach acid and evil, but it’s impossible.  It’s impossible.

Ruby shrugs it off.  “Just a quirk of yours, then.”

But it’s impossible.

* * *

“I don’t want your pity.”

Emma’s snarling at her as soon as she realizes where she is, and the anger in those eyes—and oh, God, light-haired light-eyed little girls—makes her think very carefully about her next words.

“Admiration is not pity.”

It throws Emma, and how does it even matter if dream-Swan is thrown?  Why is she still trying to score points against a figment of her guilt and misery?  “Admiration?”  The question is rough and smoky, and Regina thinks back to wood-fires and dancing and joy.

“It takes a particular breed of strength to continue.”  She gives a slight nod, like awarding points, like conceding a point.  “I admire strength.”

It’s… accepted.  Swan leans back, sips her cocoa, and they sit silently for a while.

But it’s _impossible_.

“I miss this.  Cocoa,” Emma clarifies.  “And, y’know, regular food.  Tables.  Chairs.  Warmth.”

She chuckles, because real-Swan would _hate_ the Enchanted Forest, so of course this isn’t real-Swan.  Real-Swan would never be so diplomatic about it.  “I imagine that wherever you are is significantly less comfortable than here.”

“It’s the fucking woods, Regina, it’s like the goddamn Middle Ages.”  Dream-Swan scowls, just like real-Swan, but it’s impossible and she’s not.  “Everybody talks funny and the food sucks and nobody knows what a gun is or any Led Zeppelin songs and honestly, Mulan? And Lancelot?  And who the hell else am I going to meet?  And the goddamn bugs!”

No.  No no no.  No.  It’s _impossible._  

“It’s like the worst acid trip in the history of trippy trips and about the only thing I can get with is the amount of leather everyone wears.  Except for Aurora who apparently believes that waify pink silk is—“  Emma stops, realizes that Regina is sitting bolt upright and that her hands are shaking.  “Regina?”

“Oh, my God, you’re _real_.”

Swan’s face twists from concern to horror, and she pushes away from the table and stands up, knocking the chair over.  “You… are _not_ my subconscious in ironic form?”

But it’s _impossible._

And then it doesn’t matter, because Swan is _real_ , and this fact matters enough for her to stand up and lean over the table and hiss like she’s Mayor and Queen and Regina again.  “Where are you and how the _hell_ do we get you back?”


	2. Acheron

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The original plan was for this to be complete before 2013. Epic failure.

The riddle was: why couldn’t we live in the mind.

The answer was: the barrier of the earth intervened.

_Prism_ , Louise Gluck

* * *

So.  Neither of them wanted to sound crazy, so no one knows about the dreams.  If they’re dreams.  They’re not dreams.  “It just—we don’t have much of a clue about what’s going on here, and Aurora’s having dreams with Henry in them—hey, wait, do you know about that?”

Henry’s dreams.  But that—no, that doesn’t make sense.  “Yes.  Henry’s dreams, though, they’re a side effect of surviving a sleeping curse, it’s an overlap of planes of consciousness.  Neither of us…”  Regina pushes the heels of her palms against her brow bone, tries to push the headache away before it starts.  “None of this makes sense.  We shouldn’t be able—this doesn’t make sense.  And I can’t make sense of this and figure out portals and magic and—“

“Hey.”  Swan’s hand slides across the table; two fingers touch her knuckles, just like before.

Oh, God, it was _all_ real.

“Hey.  Listen.  If I talk to Mar—Snow, and Mulan and Aurora, and anybody else we can—and wait, hold on.  Can we talk about Disney and who the hell they know that all these stories—“

“Miss Swan.  Focus.”  But she smiles, and there’s that crinkle to the corner of Emma’s right eye that says that was the intent of the tangent.  

“If I talk to them, can you talk to… my dad, and the Blue Fairy, and anybody else who might know?”

She looks between that crinkle and the faint scar under Emma’s left eyebrow, takes a deep breath.  “We consulted Rumplestiltskin about Henry’s dreams.  The night before he managed to make contact with Aurora.  I could… do the same.”

The crash of the chair on the floor—again—makes her cringe.  “No.  No way.  And you talked to him about _Henry_?”

Regina holds up a hand, asks for patience.  “I know.  I _know_.  But he… helped.  He gave him an amulet with a potion in it to control—“

“You _struck a deal_ with him?  About Henry?”  Emma looks frantic and livid and nauseated and Regina reaches out, takes both of her wrists and shakes once.

“Listen to me,” she whispers.  “Listen.  He helped.  He didn’t deal, he _gave_.”

Swan is still, frowns.  “He doesn’t give.”

“I know.”  Regina waits for Emma to look at her again.  “He’s eerily gentle around Henry.  I don’t—I don’t understand why.”  Emma releases her breath through her nose, closes her eyes.  Regina, on the other hand, stares at the places where their skin touches.  Because even if this is real-Swan, _this_ is impossible.  “I can touch you.”

She drops Emma’s wrists as soon as she feels tension in the muscle, but Swan still pulls back fully.  “Yes.  Please don’t.”

She can’t even be bothered to be insulted, because _this_ is impossible.  “Physical contact shouldn’t be possible.”   It shouldn’t.  Connected planes of consciousness don’t contain matter for contact.  Contact is for dreams.

That heavy tension between her brows starts to throb. They’ll need help on this, and when she looks up at Emma, she sees recognition of that fact all through those ocean-light eyes.  “Okay,” Swan says, and it’s just a whisper.  “Talk to Rum—Gold.  And my dad.  And the fairies.”  She sticks out a hand, looks straight at Regina, and all that comes to mind is three-week-old Henry and his tiny, yawning mouth.  “And… anything you’ve said here, I’ll take to the grave.”

Why Emma’s thought to protect her secrets before she herself has, she can’t figure out.  She can figure out why she reaches forward and takes that proffered hand, even though _trust_ leaves a nasty aftertaste in her mouth.

* * *

She starts rethinking her protectiveness over the diner when she sees Gold limp into Archie’s office with Henry shooting daggers at his back.  David, as the last to enter, looks plainly disturbed.  Archie, sitting in the chair on her right, just looks bemused.  “Gentlemen.”

“Why’s he here?” Henry asks, bluntly.

Archie goes to respond, but Regina knows how this has to go, holds up a hand to ask for a chance.  There’s something like pride at the very edges of Archie’s patient smile, and he sits back.

“I’ve asked all of you here because I’ve made  some progress with… the situation,” she fills in, “and I need input from all of you.”  She doesn’t look anywhere but at Henry, at the distance between his eyes and the way his hair is starting to flop over his brow line.

David fidgets and Rumple clears his throat, but she says nothing until Henry, slowly, nods twice.  Her lips twitch up, just slightly, the barest hint of a thank you and a smile.  “I’ve been… seeing Miss Swan, in my dreams.  I realized last night that she… is actually herself.  As in, I have a conduit to her, through dreams.”

The hope on Henry’s face blooms and shatters in the space of a minute.  “How long?” he demands, before David or Gold have even processed what she’s said.

She’s proud that he grasps everything so quickly, even if she hates the hurt and mistrust on his face.  “A few weeks.”  He keeps his eyes on her, narrow and sharp like his mother’s, and she sighs.  “I didn’t—I didn’t realize she was real.  I didn’t know.  I’m sorry.”

Rumple, of course, is the next one to start thinking things through.  “How do you know it’s her?”

The question trails off in that particularly dark, suggestive way of his.  “As opposed to an incubus or a dreamcatcher, you mean?”  Henry’s face twists in confusion, and she wishes she’d thought to sit on the couch, give them a chance to sit together like always.

She wishes she could think of a way to explain that, just like Henry, Emma holds the scent of the woods on her body, and that when either of them gets uncomfortable the first thing they do is look down and left, and that happiness makes them both vibrate with excess movement.  She wishes she could think of a way that didn’t feel like sharing a secret that is, once again, all hers.

“She displays the right behavioral markers, has the right knowledge and lack of, so to speak.  She’s aware of Henry’s dreams with Aurora, but not of anything else happening here.”

“Is she safe?” David whispers.  “Are they okay?”

She thinks that Daniel might have whispered the same way, over her, over any children they had.  “They are okay, for now.  They travel with a warrior from Chin—Fa Mulan.  She had a reputation as a fierce and honorable warrior.”  She offers a smile because it’s all she has.  “They will be okay.”

It’s silent for a few moments while they all get their bearings.  Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Archie scribble a note on his legal pad and frowns, because this _isn’t_ a therapy session.  He catches her reaction, grins, tilts the pad towards her so she can see: _eggs, milk, bagels._

Oh.  She knows she doesn’t have to say sorry, which is why she does mouth it—because there’s so, so much to be said for giving unexpectedly, and willingly.

Gold clears his throat, pulls all of their attention.  “What do you need me for, then, dearie?  If everything will be okay.”  He gestures towards Archie with one finger, returns his hand to his cane.  “And the cricket’s purpose is?  Unless this is an _intervention_ of some sort, and you require your… what is the term?  _Sober coach_?”

The only reason she’s able to stay calm is because Henry is once again glaring at Rumplestiltskin with nothing short of viciousness in his eyes.  It doesn’t really take much to figure out where he learned that particular expression.  “I’d hoped to consult with you, Rumplestiltskin, on _how_ such dreams are possible, and then to have you and Dr. Hopper consult on a far more pressing matter.”

“Which is?”

Archie gives her an encouraging nod, and she briefly looks to David for understanding before looking at Henry.  “Now that I have a connection to them, I want to find a way to keep Henry out of that Netherworld.”  She tries to smile at him, even as confusion and that too-familiar uncertainty overtake his face again.  “I don’t want you to get hurt again,” she whispers.

“Agreed.”  David’s voice is strong and almost princely, and the gratitude that sweeps through her lungs stings like stale cigarettes.

Henry turns on him, almost pouting.  “But—but I can _help_!”

Gold is watching her, gaze darting from her mouth to her eyes.  “Indeed, young Henry, you can.  Because who’s to say you can trust the Queen?”

He says it softly, sibilant as always, and she can almost see how the stain of the words colors Henry and David, seeps in through their ears and noses.  David grimaces—how does it taste, she wonders, suspicion like that?—and reaches for Henry’s hand, grips it tightly.  “He has a point.  How do we know this isn’t a ploy to keep them there?  How do we know this is real?”

It _hurts_ , the way Henry’s eyes widen, the way she can see everything bottoming out of his world.  “Regina—may I?”  She closes her eyes, nods for Archie.  “She began talking about the dreams two weeks ago, thinking that they were products of her… anxiety over not having found Emma and Snow yet.’

“She could’ve—“

“She didn’t,” Henry says suddenly, and her lungs feel clean again.  “She didn’t plan this.  She’s not making it up.”

Her little boy keeps having these flashes of manliness, of maturity, and it’s beautiful and terrifying.  “I know you want to help, Henry.  But you have to realize how much you’ve already done.  _You_ helped break the curse.  _You_ helped save my life.  _You_ ’ _ve_ gone into a room of fire three times now and gave us confirmation of the most important thing: that Emma and Snow are alive, and free, and fighting to get home.”

She wants to say: _you_ _keep saving my life, Henry, you keep rescuing me from my own fires, don’t you see_?

She says, “I made you two promises, right?  No magic, and that I’d find a way to bring them back.  But I made you a promise a long time ago, sweetheart, when you were only three weeks old and you didn’t even know how to smile yet.  I promised I’d never let you come to harm.”  And if she thinks about it, the way she can see David is thinking about it, the way she can see Henry _isn’t_ , she’s already failed that promise so many times—but she’s trying.  She’s trying.  “Please, Henry, please let me try to keep my promises.”

Rumplestiltskin shifts on the couch again, and she hopes he’s shifting as much from pain as awkwardness.  David, at least, has the sense to keep still, let Henry weigh this out.

Her son nods, quickly and twice, and then looks away.  It’s more than she’d hoped for.  It’s so much more.

* * *

The light in the diner is pale, like early morning, and Emma is shredding the edges of sugar packets.  “So that’s a nothing, then?” Regina asks mildly.

Emma just shakes her head, picks up another packet.

It’s odd, but maybe this is how Swan acted when she didn’t finish her homework for class.  “Rumple has a hypothesis.  He hasn’t seen this before, but it could be a side-effect of Henry’s dreams.”  Emma manages to glance up at her, and the table shakes just slightly, moving with the motion of her jumping leg.  “That because he is constantly going back to that particular plane, both of us are… shifting.  But since neither of us have been exposed to a sleeping curse, we don’t quite make it to that same plane.”

“Why both of us?”  Her voice sounds scratchy and dehydrated, like at the beginning.  

“A mother’s love is a powerful thing,” Regina murmurs, and she doesn’t understand why Emma looks away, why her hands are twisting around themselves.  “Body and heart, one from each of us.  It’s just a hypothesis.  Most of the people who survive sleeping curses—the only other survivors don’t have living mothers.”

Emma says nothing, doesn’t even glance at her in reproach, and surely she knows?  Snow White, Aurora, Henry—all three curses inextricably tied to Regina.  This—Emma Swan would surely hold her responsible?

“I—I think, though, that it might have more to do with when you—when we created the portal.  That… transfer.  I’ve kept that to myself.  Rumple doesn’t need to know about any latent magic you might have and what is _wrong_ with you?”  It bursts out, harsh and frightened and angry, because this timid, fidgeting _girl_ isn’t Emma.  And she wants, she needs Emma, Emma who will snap back and push back and fight like a goddamn queen.  

The Emma she gets just barely manages to look her in the eye.  “Regina… your mother knows about Henry.”

She screams.  It echoes around her bedroom—and oh, if she could shatter mirrors, she would, because she needs to be asleep, she needs answers, how— _no._

_No, no, no_.

She tries to calm her heartbeat, her breathing, tries to relax, pinches her eyes closed so tightly it burns, but there’s dawn out the window and _no, no, no_.

Pills.  She has to have pills.  A sedative, a sleeping pill, she’ll take a poisoned apple right now if she can get back there and find out how and where and how long and there’s nothing.  She’d gotten rid of everything that even resembled a crutch, so there is nothing besides perfume bottles and tubs of lotion and all her fourteen shades of red lipstick.

She breaks everything.  Every single bottle, the mirrors, shatters a jewelry box and it’s not enough, because her mother is alive and knows about Henry and everything’s broken already.

* * *

When David shows up at noon, she has a list and a bag ready for him.  “You will collect these additional items, and follow these instructions to the letter.  Place each ward exactly where indicated.  If you cannot find anything between the library, my office or Gold’s pawn shop, let me know immediately.”

He looks at her like she’s Queen again, but she doesn’t feel like anything other than sixteen.  “What is this?”

“Witch’s blind.”  David blinks at her, and she thinks—just for a moment—that he will not ever be enough to protect Henry.  “A way to keep a witch from detecting your presence.  Not foolproof but will serve its purpose.  You will set this up in Miss Swan’s apartment.  I believe I’ve accounted for every window and outside door, but if I have not, we will adjust.  I have already placed a call to Miss Lucas, she has agreed to serve as part of the protection detail.”

David puts a heavy hand on her shoulder and pushes, lightly.  “Regina.  You’re not making sense.  Protection detail?”

“For Henry.”  The man is a simpleton, always has— _no_.  No.  That’s not who she is.  That’s not relevant to keeping Henry alive.  “My mother has learned of his existence.  His safety is now the only priority.  Do you understand me?”

She can see it click, can see the flash of fear before the prince settles back in.  “I understand.  I’ll take care of it.”

She could say thank you, but— _but_.  “Do you—“ She stops, centers, tries again.  “David, I—“

“I love him too.”

She exhales.  “Thank you.”

* * *

Archie’s given her three small, round peach pills and told her, in no uncertain terms, that she must only use one at a time.  She looks at all three in the palm of her hand for a good half hour, then places just one on the tip of her tongue and finishes her glass of water.

Emma isn’t sitting across the table but in the very corner on Regina’sside, and she asks before she remembers it doesn’t matter.  “You can control—?”

A quick shake of her head, and Emma offers a small smile.  “I’ve been waiting.”

Waiting.  Asleep for how long?  And where?  And how?  “Are—are you safe, when you sleep?”

“We’re in a settlement tonight.  And I took something.”

“Me too.”  Her hands are shaking and she wraps them around the coffee mug, does everything she can to keep them still.  “How?  How does she—how?”

“She tricked me.”  And then Emma shakes her head.  “She didn’t.  She didn’t trick me.  I was stupid.  She—I didn’t know who she was, and she posed as a prisoner with us, and she’d killed the real leader and was posing as him, too, and I just—I said I had to go home to my son, and that I share him with you, and I said names and I didn’t—“

She chucks the mug into the wall and it’s not enough.  She lets the force of the throw keep her hands in motion and she backhands Swan across the face, and it’s not enough.  She tries for a punch and it’s not enough and she can’t even do it right because, oh, God, _it’s happening all over again_.  

She can’t put any force behind her hands, can’t do anything but rail against Emma, who grabs her wrists, holds her to stillness, holds her until she’s sobbing.  She curls in on herself and sobs and and curls onto the floor and sobs and curls into a ball and sobs.  She tries to tell Emma to let go of her but she can’t; she tries to tell Emma that betrayal must be genetic but she can’t.  Emma holds her while she completely fails, and Emma smells like leather and fire and pine trees, and Regina _hates_ her, but she can’t even do that right because Emma is all she’s got, now, all her hope, even if she’s the whole problem to begin with.

Regina sobs and Emma whispers, “What will she do?”

The truly petrifying thing is that Regina doesn’t know.  Her mother is dead.  Her mother is supposed to be dead.  But her mother is alive and her mother loves power and _what will she do?_   A son is not a clean-cut case of paths to power; a son is a product of power and a pawn to power and Regina’s son, _Emma’s_ son, is the lynchpin in everyone’s power.  Would her mother kill Henry?  Torture him?  

_Love_ him?  

“I don’t know.  I don’t know.”

She starts failing again and Emma squeezes her wrists, whispers in her ear, low and rough and enraged.  “She will not get him.  Are you listening to me?  She will _not_ get to him.”

Stupid Swan.  “Don’t make empty promises—“

“I will kill her.”  It’s hard to see with the tears blurring her eyes, but Emma looks like she means it.  Stupid Swan.  As if she has any idea what it takes to kill someone as powerful as Cora— _oh_.  Oh.  As if Regina herself does.  “I will kill her, and anybody else who has to die, to make sure that she never comes near him.”

“Idiot,” Regina hisses.  “She’s been feeding on the magic of that land for twenty eight years, unchecked, and you’re the imbecile who took a gun to a dragon fight.  She will _break_ you—“

“So tell me how.”

There is no way.  Stupid Swan.

* * *

Instead of David, she gets Kathryn Nolan.

Wrong.  Abigail.  There’s enough stiffness to the spine, enough disdain at the mouth: this is Abigail. She’d liked Kathryn better.  Kathryn, at least, had a sense of her own agency.

Regardless, she steps aside and allows Abigail in without a word.  Kathryn wore her hair loose—neat, but loose—and Abigail’s version of reclaiming her body includes more hairpins than should be legal.  “Even as a pariah, you do know how to keep house, Regina.”

She bites her tongue hard enough to force the corners of her mouth up.  “What can I do for you, Princess?”

When Abigail turns around to face her, it’s harder to tell who she’s talking to.  Is this what it’s like, for everyone?  Like slipping between personalities, being caught in a blender?  “You orchestrated my kidnapping.”

“Yes.”

Whatever Abigail was expecting, it clearly wasn’t frank admission.  The inability to conceal emotions is a Kathryn trademark and there’s hurt pouring out of those blue eyes.  “Why?”

“It served my purposes.”

“So we were never friends.”

Regina thinks about laughing, but she isn’t trying to be cruel, just honest.  Honest is this: Maleficent is a pile of ash and Kathryn is merely a muscle memory.  “Evil doesn’t have friends.”

“Are you evil?”

She sighs, closes her eyes.  “Princess, I don’t have time to rehash the history of all seven kingdoms for you.”

“As I understand it, all you have is time.”  It’s three quick steps to the door, which she holds open without comment.  Abigail nods just slightly, which is the most gracious acceptance of a forfeit Regina’s ever seen.  “Think it over, Regina.”

If she weren’t so devoted to dreaming, it would keep her up at night.

* * *

“So you have magic.”

“Minimal.”  She sighs.  “I’ve been… seeing Dr. Hopper.  About possibly… So I haven’t been—”

“Using?”  She expects anything but the gentleness in Emma’s eyes and voice.  “Does Henry know?”

She nods, avoids eye contact.

Emma sighs, drops her head back against the wall.  She looks incomplete without a tumbler of whiskey and a cigar—but those are Regina’s own projections, her own longings.  Regina misses cigars.  She misses all the tiny vices.

“How… how bad, was it?”

There is only whiteness on the other side of the diner window, but Regina keeps her eyes trained out anyway.  _These are things you will not speak of,_ and she has always been one for obedience.  _These are lessons passed from mother to child._

Sometimes her knees still hurt—still feel cracked and bleeding—from kneeling on wheat chaff on a stone floor for hours.  Sometimes she doesn’t believe that she can make sound—sometimes, in the morning, she hums just to remind herself that her voice exists.  

_Perfection is greatness, dear.  You will be great._

Henry’s uneven eyes have always been the most beautiful things in her world.  His uneven eyes and how he pokes his tongue out of the side of his mouth when he concentrates especially hard—these have always been her perfect things.

She takes three deep breaths, pushes with her tongue at the tiny snag on the inside edge of her upper lip, the one that follows the path of the scar.  “Magic leaves no marks,” she says, softly.

From Emma’s slight movement, she’s fairly certain the wish for something to smoke is mutual.

“You’re not her, Regina.”  

Swan _would_ try to make this a moment.  Regina sighs, doesn’t take her eyes from the window.  “Aren’t I?”  She never intends for the question to sound quite so despondent, but then again, she’s spent the last three weeks telling Emma Swan every mistake she’s made, every fear she has for Henry.  Most of all: that he will one day have nothing for her but fear.

“Even if things got… bad, for a while, he knows you love him.”  Two fingers, feather light, to the back of her hand; she can’t help but move, just slightly, into the touch.  “And if he doesn’t, I’ll kick his ass.  As soon as I’m back.”

There’s a half-smile, a wry little thing, on her face before she realizes it.  “I question the efficacy of such methods, but I appreciate the support.”

“Do _any_ of you speak like ordinary fucking people?” 

* * *

Henry can keep his seat better than she could at ten, no thanks at all to David, who is actually only a passable equestrian.  At least he admitted it freely and ceded control of lessons to her without a fuss.  Henry stopped questioning it once she took Sancho through a few easy jumps, some low-level dressage movements.  It only took a few minutes to feel that livewire from the base of her skull straight through to the ground again.  It was enough to impress her son into attentive silence.

Lessons are twice a week and the small things she gets to share, the way she gets to reassure him when he feels awkward and uncomfortable, the fact that she gets to see his thrilled smile the first time he nudges Ladon into a walk—they make her ribs hurt.  She wouldn’t trade them for the world.

If she maybe takes the long way around to the exercise corral, if she perhaps always tends to Sancho in the wide empty space in front of the tack room, if David always is the one to lead Sancho to and from his stall without comment—Henry is smiling at her again.  What wouldn’t she face for that?

Post-lesson grooming is usually a quiet affair, because David knows what he’s talking about when it comes to building trust with a horse.  But today, when Henry takes the currycomb to Ladon’s shoulders, he doesn’t talk about carrots, sugar, or exactly how many miles it is to Boston.  “Does she ask about me?”

Regina doesn’t know how to feel about how she feels about that question.  Her answer comes out choked, because could Henry really doubt that he’s loved?  Has she failed at that, too?  “Henry, sweetheart, you’re the best part of all our conversations.”

He doesn’t smile, but he nods, keeps working down the broad, grey back.  “Does she know how hard you’re working?  To bring them back?”

She’s just leaned into Sancho’s right foreleg, just tapped at his ankle with two fingers, and she almost falls over instead of supporting the hoof.

“You should tell her, Mom.  She should know that you’re trying.”

_Eyes down_.  She keeps her eyes down, moves the pick quickly from back to front, focuses so hard on the frog of the hoof that her swimming vision clears out with four rapid blinks.  “I’ll tell her, Henry.”

He seems satisfied by that, continues around to Ladon’s right side.  They work in silence for a while longer, until Henry steps back from the mounting steps and sets the currycomb aside.  “Mom?”

Sancho’s hooves are clean and Regina knows that whatever Henry’s about to say is more important, so she traces the three shining marks on the horse’s muzzle and waits.  

“Can I stay with you tonight?  Because being bachelor shepherds is cool but I—I dunno.  I’m getting tired of potatoes.”

Her tiny, strangled sob gets muffled by Sancho’s routine snuffle for sugar.  “I wish you could, sweetheart.  But you won’t be as safe.  I—I can’t keep you as safe at home.”

Every word burns, coming out of her mouth, but Henry just nods and comes around with the sugar tin.  “Because you gave all the magic things to Gramps?”

There is such a particular curl to his mouth, every time he says _Gramps_ , that part of her wishes she’d known to have grandparents for him.  All of her wishes for her father to see her baby boy.  “Exactly.”

Sancho carefully grubs two lumps of sugar from Henry’s open palm; Henry strokes the horse’s nose and then looks up at her.  “So what’s keeping you safe?”

When she opens her arms, he already knows, and he nestles into the hug with his ear above her navel.  When he was a toddler, he’d make her lie with him on the couch after dinner almost every night so he could hear “the sea aminals, Mommy, I want to hear the sea aminals!”

She hasn’t eaten today, but he’s not listening for anything but her heartbeat, anyway.  

* * *

“So if Gold has magic, and all those tokens have magic, and Ruby’s a goddamn werewolf, can’t you—“

“Rumplestiltskin _is_ magic.  As is Miss Lucas.  Magical entities remain magical, regardless of free magic in the environment, regardless of the plane it is in.  But it’s the free magic that changes things.”  Emma is smart, and when Regina thinks back to thinking of her as dream-Swan, as a refraction of her own intelligence, she has to smile.  “Rumple’s continued human form in this world is a byproduct of his magic, not a hindrance.  Miss Lucas has always had a hybrid form; breaking the curse merely lifted the… restrictions on the form.  But ordinary humans don’t contain magic in their bodies.  Those with a predisposition to magic learn to pull it from the environment, to manipulate that which is around us.  The more you do it, the longer you do it, the more magical residue in your body.  But humans have no magic in the body.  I had to take extra steps to reclaim any ability here, otherwise it would have been mere residue.  It’s not inherent.  And residue won’t be enough.”

Emma’s smiling, a little bit.  “So magic is chemistry?”

It suddenly feels heavier than it should, because all she can think of is how creating a lightning ball feels exactly like arguing with Emma.  “Chemistry is magic,” she finds herself saying, and sees when Emma gets it, too.  

* * *

At noon, David shows up with a briefcase and four manila folders tucked under his arm.  “Budgets aren’t dragons,” he says, and she has to bite her tongue to keep the retorts in.

“Quite a non-sequitur,” she replies, voice smooth, and lets him in.  “Care to elaborate?”

He follows her into the study, almost drops the folders twice.  “The… There’s a provisional government, being set up.”

There’s a hard knot in the pit of her stomach, instantly, but she just nods and settles on the couch, waits for him to sit in the chair.  “I take it you mean a government that is more substantial than you running around with a sword?”

He has the grace to blush, smile sheepishly.  It’s simultaneously endearing and irritating.  “We have an abundance of kings and queens.  They all want in.”

“Mmm.  So a high council, of sorts?”  She counts off in her head: Mitchell, George, Midas, Maurice, Helene, and Snow.  Would they count Rumple?  Appoint a commoner Lord?  It won’t end well, she knows that now.  

“Of sorts.”  

“Your father?”

“Considered reinstated.  I’m stepping in for Snow.”  He hesitates, then hands two of the folders over to her.  “But I apparently have to earn my seat.  Prove that I know something about running a kingdom.  I could use your help.  You have thirty years of experience running a town.  I don’t want to screw this up.”

That knot in her stomach has a twin in her throat and she doesn’t move to take the folders, can only stare at them like they’re exotic vipers.  

David shifts and her gaze goes to him, which was apparently the point.  Once they’re looking at each other, he says, slowly, “This isn’t amnesty.”

_But it’s something_.

She takes the folders.

* * *

The skin along Emma’s collarbones is split, cut and scraped apart.  It isn’t bleeding, though, and for that she’s grateful, even if looking at the crusted blood and slowly building scabs is a little gross.

“Mulan’s in worse shape.  Broke her arm—weak arm, thankfully—and her ribs took a beating.”  Emma taps at the cut on her chest absently; at least she knows not to scratch directly.  “Aurora and Snow are pretty much okay, just bruised up.”

All of her instincts say to grab a first aid kit and get to work, or to focus all her energy through her hands and heal, but none of that is possible here and none of it would be effective, anyway.  It doesn’t stop her from taking a gentle and thorough inventory of Emma’s wounds, though, because she needs to know what Cora’s using, what they’ll be up against.  “So she suppressed Mulan and attacked you.  You’re the only one with blood drawn.”  Regina rotates Emma’s wrist, notes the smaller nicks and bruises blossoming along the vein lines.  “She went for your blood.”

Emma is smart and Regina is thankful for that.  It’s hard enough to talk about her mother’s capabilities.  Talking about the realities of her attacks and the system of thought behind them is excruciating.  “Literally.  Yes.  She came for and focused on me.  Mulan is the strongest fighter, then Snow.  Aurora’s untrained.  She held them down with some kind of…”

“Spell?”  Somehow, the fact that Emma can see the realities of magic every day and still not be able to say words like _spell_ or _curse_ or _potion_ without her mouth twisting is comforting.  Like she is who she is no matter where she is.

“Yeah.  Flick of her wrist and they were pinned.  Which, long run—better than zombies.”  Something in Emma’s eyes darkens, and she clears her throat unexpectedly.  “Her magic… it’s too strong.  I don’t know how to defend against that.  None of us do.”

Emma is tired.  She’s clearly running low on everything and Regina is supposed to have figured out a way to bring her home already.  “If she has your blood she can track you, and your mother.  You need to bring her to a place where she has no magical advantage.”

“Gee, I wonder where in the _Enchanted_ Forest that is?”  Emma rolls her eyes and Regina crosses her arms, huffs, waits.  That exhaustion pushes down on Emma again—visibly, and that isn’t good, that isn’t good at all—and her shoulders drop.  “Bring her to you.  Bring her through.”

Smart Swan.  “Yes.  And then behead her.”

Violence like that should shock Emma, should make Regina herself cringe.  That neither of them react makes some tiny, tiny part of Regina shudder.  _Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live_ , though, and Henry’s life is on the line.

“We don’t even know how to get to you.”

“I’m trying.”

“And bringing her closer to him?  That’s dumb, Regina.”

“He’s protected.”

“How well?  What if we get her there and she’s still powerful?  How much residue is enough?”

“I don’t know.”  Emma is smart and Regina hates her for it.  Smart people ask too many questions, ask about the parts of the plan that make her nauseous with uncertainty.

“So don’t open a portal.”

Stupid Swan.  “Please refrain from flinging moronic suggestions in my face while I’m trying to save your life.”

“Don’t open a portal.”

“Shut up, Emma.”

“If it keeps her away from him—“

“ _Shut up._ ”

* * *

It comes to her when she sees Ruby shivering on the deck in the early morning in far too little clothing with a few leaves in her hair.  It’s blood.  It’s blood—the wild, and light and dark.  It comes to her and she finds herself irritated that she didn’t realize it sooner.  She’s irritated enough to consider, for a moment, leaving Ruby out there as is and locking herself in her study with the old books.

Instead she prepares two mugs of tea and picks up a woolen throw blanket from the den and joins Ruby out on the deck.  She gets a grateful smile when she hands over the tea and tucks the blanket around Ruby’s thin, thin frame.  “Is there a reason you’re trying to contract pneumonia?”

There’s something different to the way Ruby holds her body, to the way she meets Regina’s eyes.  “I ran, last night,” she explains, and it _does_ explain: the wolf is just below the surface; Ruby’s only partially Ruby.

“Freely?”

Perhaps she’s been underestimating everyone, all this time.  Ruby, too, can read what she’s really saying.  “All through the woods, and no one was hurt.”

Regina sips at her tea and nods.  “Good.”  It means more—it means _for you_ —and Ruby looks at her like she understands that, too.

“And George is gone.  He burned the hat.”

She knows; David called last night.  “We don’t need the hat.”

The silence is heavy, because Ruby is back, fully, and she has that darkness in her eyes that says _I’m hurting and you’re why_.  “I chained Belle in the library to protect her from me.”

Shit.  Belle— _shit_.  “How did that work?” and her voice is steady, strong.  She is the Queen, she can do this.

“Shitty.  Turns out she was locked up for the last 28 years, so me chaining her up?  Not so high on the good list.”  And when Ruby turns her shoulders to look straight at Regina, there’s this aching pain in her eyes.  Betrayal.

But—Regina thinks, fast.  Ruby and Belle could never have known each other in the Enchanted— _oh._

_“You_ locked her up.”

Regina cradles her mug against her knees.  “Yes.”

“You made her suffer so he couldn’t be happy.”

“I made _everyone_ suffer so _no one_ could be happy.”  She snaps it, and Ruby hisses, leans back.  Stupid, lovesick girl.  “Or have you forgotten already?”

“I didn’t suffer.  You gave me a life without the wolf.”

“I gave a wolf a life without a pack or free range.  I gave you a life chained to a diner and an old woman.  What is that if not cruel?”

“I am _trying_ to forgive you, here.  Help me out a little!”  But Ruby’s voice chokes up and her eyes go hard and shining, and Regina is so tired of feeling bad for being honest but it’s all she knows to do.  “You locked her up to keep her away from him.”

“Yes.”

“I can’t forgive you for that.”

If she were anyone else, she would reach out now and put a hand on Ruby’s knee, or her arm, or just somewhere to give comfort.  “You shouldn’t,” is all she offers, because she’s herself.

Ruby curls in on herself, forehead to her knees and blanket tight around her shoulders.  “Should I keep her away from him?”

She isn’t herself; she reaches out in one smooth motion, pulls a few fragmented leaves from those long, shining locks.  “Rumplestiltskin kept her with him for years.  I kept her away from him for years.  If you want her, you should do neither.”  There’s a particular snag in the hair just behind Ruby’s ear; she needs both hands to untangle it and Ruby watches her out of the corner of her eye.  “Something I’ve learned, Miss Lucas: if you want someone to choose you, you have to give them the choice.”

The slightest crinkle to Ruby’s lower lip says that she’s chewing the inside.  Regina hopes she doesn’t try anything stupid like denial.  “As her friend, though, I should be concerned about him?”

It’s not denial, exactly.  Just like it’s not an olive branch, exactly.  “As her friend, you should be ready and willing to kill him.”  Ruby averts her eyes, closes them.  Regina vaguely remembers that ache of trepidation at the very pit of the stomach.  It’s nice to find someone who still has that.  It’s nice to find someone who has hopes of keeping that.  “Now, Miss Lucas.  You can come inside and properly warm up while you help me sort out the last piece of this portal business, or you can go loping off into the woods again.  Which will it be?”


	3. Cerberus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am wildly nervous about this part, but think I'm at that point where I need to stop revising. If I ask you to trust me, will you?
> 
> Beware, this way lies blood, guts and whiplash. [No, seriously, there's blood and squick, and it moves quickly.]

 

This silence is my companion now.  
I ask:  _of what did my soul die?_  
and the silence answers

_if your soul died, whose life_   
_are you living and_   
_when did you become that person?_

_Echoes_ , Louise Gluck

* * *

The pawnshop feels just shy of too still when she walks in; even the bell above the door seems muffled. Under ordinary circumstances, even that much discomfort would prompt an attack or a complete withdrawal from her. Today she just waits near the door, lets her fingers run over the curved damask top of the wingback chair by the window. Nothing moves besides her fingers, not even dust. She wants out.

Finally, finally, the heavy curtain over the door from the back rustles, moves, and Regina's forced to just stand and stare at Belle, who doesn't hesitate for a moment, who even smiles at her. "Regina."

The accent is as grating as ever. "Belle." She takes a moment, studies the smile: nervousness at the corners of the mouth, resentment in the eyes. No, Belle still presents no threat. "I came to speak to Mr. Gold."

Belle doesn't move, but the smile fades. "Yes, we know."

It's unsettling, that  _we_ , but Regina plays amused, takes two steps further into the shop. "I see. And are  _we_  amenable to discussion, or should I have brought a human sacrifice to barter?"

That resentment flares up, even sparks; the game never really changes. "Ruby said you'd changed. But I suppose that was too much to hope for, really."

No, the game never changes, and she realizes how foolish she'd been, how easy it all could have been. She'd never thought of the particular vengeance of new love. She'd never thought to simply… have Belle love someone else. It wouldn't take much, just a drop or two of three particular tonics and a candidate for the affections.

It still wouldn't take much. She has the only tonic she needs: knowledge. It wouldn't take much. A word, right now. Just a hint. The barest push. It wouldn't take much.

"I suppose it was," she finally says, tonelessly. "Now. Mr. Gold, if you please."

Belle frowns, stares at her for a moment as if waiting for the fight to burst out into the open. Regina takes the time to steady her breathing, to push any thoughts of  _as her friend_  from her mind. "Follow me."

The air in the back of the shop  _moves_ , and she realizes, right away, that the showroom has been dampened against magic. She's more out of sorts than she'd realized, to miss something like that.

Gold, at his paper-laden desk, doesn't look up when she draws close. "Belle, would you mind—" Belle merely smiles, squeezes his shoulder, and returns to the front of the shop. Regina wonders if it was the twenty eight years in a cell here or the three years in a cell there that took all sense of self-preservation out of Belle's head.

If there's a tightening in her throat, if it tastes like remorse, she ignores it. There's no time.

"Did restoring Lake Nostos also restore the position of the Lady?"

"Lovely to see you too, Regina, would you care for some tea?"

As Rumple still hasn't looked up, she doesn't bother actually rolling her eyes. "After all these years, Rumplestiltskin, let's not devolve into civilized pleasantries now."

And there—the hint of a grin, a shift in breathing like a stifled laugh. "Indeed," is all he says, and he sets his pen down, looks up at her. "What is your interest in Lake Nostos?"

The air, she realizes, moves enough that she can't quite shake the feeling of being scrubbed from her skin. Second line of defense, and she thinks perhaps it's geared specifically towards her. It feels like pushing against the glass of a mirror to Wonderland.

It feels  _wonderful_.

It's supposed to, is designed to make her feel high, is designed to lower all her own defenses. She pushes, hard, down on all recognition of sensation, dulls it all.  _Nothing but thought_. When she's herself again, she looks at Rumple, sees that old curiosity and exhilaration in his eyes. "I want to know if restoring the lake also restored the Lady," she says steadily, ignores the conditioned pride rising in her spine.

If he's planning a third phase of tests, he doesn't launch it right away. "And what is your interest in the Lady?"

"I want the Sword of the Worlds."

Rumple  _laughs_  at her. "She can't use it, dearie. Don't waste your effort."

He always has been able to put her thoughts together faster than she can. "Why not?"

"She has no training in magic. As for natural ability, well. For all you know, she could be as adept as her father."

"I can train her." Another laugh, and she can't suppress the anger that flares up in response. She's been foolish, coming here; they're too attuned to each other, too steeped in their old patterns. "She wouldn't need to know much. Just enough to open a portal. Even Charming could do that."

Rumple watches her. She stares back, keeps her mouth still and her brow smooth. "Tell me, what is it you hope to gain by bringing them back? One took your true love, the other will take Henry. You, dearie, are not nearly so noble."

She keeps her brow smooth, measures out the space between her words. "The rules of any portal are clear. The same number in as out." He leans forward, frowning, but she holds back the smile. "Three went in. Three come out."

"And the third?"

She releases the smirk slowly, lets just the right side of her mouth curl. "A very dear friend of yours." She waits, searches for even the slightest fidget. "My mother."

His human form betrays far more emotions than his imp face ever did, but they're unrecognizable to her anyway. "After all the work you did to rid yourself of her? Why, Regina, one would think you're regressing."

And now, the full smile— _careful,_ she tells herself,  _careful_. "No, dear. Escalating."

He understands immediately; that much, she can see. It takes a few minutes for him to decide on a course of action, and she lets him process, marinate, whatever it is he does. His face is a blank mask the entire time. "Very well. I'll tell you what you want to know."

She waits.

"And in return, you will leave me out of this plan. I want no part of it."

For a moment, she doesn't understand—until there's a brief moment of peace from the magic in the air, until his eyes go towards the door and soften, just slightly. She wants to be appalled, or surprised, or scornful, but instead she thinks, abruptly, of how Henry used to love watercolor paints. Without any inflection to her voice, she says, "Deal."

* * *

Emma doesn't stop laughing for a good three minutes. To be fair, something was going to be the final straw; if not stumbling onto the tag team of Mulan and Sleeping Beauty, then being told to go find the Lady of the Lake would do it. The Excalibur part probably isn't helping matters.

"Miss Swan. If you would be so kind as to act like an adult." Emma keeps laughing, and Regina huffs, crosses her arms and taps the toe of her shoe against the table leg. "Em _ma_."

The laughter dies down, somewhat, when Regina drags out the name. "I'm sorry, but, you realize that you're telling me I'm King Arthur, right? Camelot, Sword in the Stone, King Arthur."

She can't help it, it's right there: "I do think Wart would be a more appropriate name for you."

Emma stops laughing.

Barely tamping down her smirk, she continues. "You are not King Arthur. King Arthur is in repose. You are at best a questing knight and you need the Lady to grant you the weapons of Avalon."

"Which happen to include Excalibur."

"Yes."

Someway, somehow, Emma has a plate of waffle fries and gravy in front of her; she picks up one hatch mark and uses it to gesture. "And this other sword Carnivore."

She rolls her eyes, can't stop herself. " _Carnwennan_ ," she corrects.

"Right, Carnivore." Emma's grinning around the fry she's popped into her mouth, and Regina refuses to smile back, mostly successfully. "And we use them to open a portal and defeat Cora."

Emma says it like it will be simple. Regina doesn't know how to tell her that she's already failed at this once, doesn't know how to explain that her mother is the largest thing in her world, has always been. Cora killed giants for sport. Cora doesn't  _die_. How—

Irrelevant. They have the way, now. They have the way and it will work. "Yes."

"And despite the whole 'it's your fight, have fun' bit, you trust all this info? You think this will work?"

It's eerie, how Emma does that, over and over again—sees right into her head. "That's probably my main reason for trusting it, Miss Swan. Furthermore, it is  _my_ plan, merely based on Rumplestiltskin's information. So yes, I think it will work." Emma smirks, not unkindly, and Regina quickly looks away. "Now, listen carefully, because there are rules to engaging with the Lady."

"Let me guess: respect for magic, blah blah blah, bow six times and curtsy twice, blah blah—" At least Emma is attentive in her disrespect; Regina huffs enough and she stops. "C'mon, Regina, it's clearly gonna be some dumb ritual crap. Which, you know,  _super_  cool. But, uh, not really my thing?"

Regina bites her tongue, reminds herself that patience is supposedly a virtue. "The three base runes for all other magic runes are dark, light, and wild. True Love magic is the intersection of all three; you, as the product of True Love, are a walking talking version of the potion Rumpel used to bring magic back."

"Which is why things in Storybrooke started moving again as soon as I was there."

"Exactly. You were essentially leaking magic into the town. To someone as attuned to magic as the Lady, you will be a glowing beacon of magic. So she will find you, and she will approach you as soon as you reach the water." Emma makes a face, dives to catch a drip of gravy from the fry she has hanging above the plate. "Now, Excalibur was forged as the Sword of the Worlds. It was meant to bestow power in whatever world it is in—light worlds, dark worlds, magicless worlds."

"And therefore it can… link worlds?"

"Pin them together, when wielded by the right person, and only at the places where the border is thinnest."

"Where a portal has already been."

"Yes."

"True Love magic really has dark magic in it?"

_Honestly_. The naiveté of these damn Charmings. " _Really_?" Emma has the decency to look abashed at the question. "True Love magic leaves little but destruction in its wake. It is entirely self-serving and borderline self-harming. More people die for someone else's True Love than flourish as a result of it."

Something in Swan's eyes shifts to haunted, and she nods in silent acceptance. "And wild magic?"

"Has no allegiance, no master. Tends to reside in the blood of a thing, in its essence, but there are other types. Earth magic, for example, like nymphs and dryads; moon, like were-creatures; water—"

"Okay, I get it. Nature magic."

She hesitates and the scholar in her, the perfectionist, keeps going. "Not quite. There's energy magic, too, and sex magic. They all fall under wild magic."

For once, she is grateful that Emma is paler, because at least her own blush goes mostly undetected. "Sex magic?" It comes out somewhat squeaky; Regina would laugh if she felt remotely comfortable talking about it.

"Incredibly powerful, incredibly dangerous. Consider it the magical equivalent of nuclear fusion."

"So anytime somebody has sex here—"

"No, Miss Swan, not  _any_  time." Regina rolls her eyes, again, and this time can't hide the smirk. "Should you feel that you can no longer suppress your feelings for sweet Aurora, you will not set off an atom bomb in the forest. Relax."

She takes a gravy-covered fry to the jaw as fair retribution for the glare on Emma's face.

* * *

Waiting the two nights it takes for Emma's little raiding party to make it to Lake Nostos is enough to drive Regina to the last two sleeping pills. It's late in the season and the light fades too early for either of their tastes—and the cold, neither of them will speak of the cold—but she makes Swan promise not to get killed by being reckless and rushing in the dark. Not that Emma listens. Of course Emma only sleeps for two hours on the first night—on horseback, as if she has an iota of equestrian skill—while Mulan scouts and Snow leads.

"You're an  _idiot_."

"She's on our tail, Regina—"

"And by traveling in the dark, you've left yourself defenseless. On top of exhausted."

"You said to hurry!"

"I  _said_  to make haste!"

Emma's mouth curves down, quickly but sharply. Henry frowns the same way, and it takes a moment for Regina to realize that she hasn't seen that frown in over a week. Henry's been smiling for her, at his lessons, at their Wednesday afternoon milkshake meetings, at the dinner David brought him home for.

"Look, I don't know how long I'll be asleep. Anything I need to keep in mind?'

"Don't  _die._ "

If Swan reads it as roughly affectionate, it's her own problem. "Top priority. Anything else?"

She tries to think of the things that Emma should know about the Lady: that she's coy, that she's a genius, that she gets off on confusing mortals. That she hasn't always been the Lady, that she doesn't have to stay the Lady. These are things Emma already knows. These are things that won't really get her anywhere in making her case.

She looks at Emma, then, scrutinizes her, tries to read her weaknesses. The roughness to her appearance is deeper than just hard travel; the Lady will attack her femininity. She clenches her jaw too much, as a default, so the Lady will come first in an intentionally-botched physical attack, to get it over with and lull Emma into complacency. Regina expects that Emma walks into new places with wonder scrawled all over her face. The Lady will use that, too.

"Don't let your guard down for a second, no matter what she does. She always has an attack ready. Nothing she does should faze you. No matter what magic she uses, act like it's old news. And hold on to the belief that you are exactly as you are meant to be. Nothing she says is relevant to your capabilities. Do you understand?"

Smart-ass Swan puts a hand to her heart and fakes a simpering smile. "You like me just the way I am? Oh, Regina, no one's ever—"

"Miss Swan."

Thankfully, the act ceases quickly. "So she's gonna try and tear me down?"

"She'll whisper whatever she has to in your ear to get you to tear yourself down."

There's hesitation around those light eyes, the barest widening from fear. "Listen. If I fuck up—"

"If you manage to evade my mother but fall to the Lady of the Lake, Miss Swan, I will make sure that you never hear the end of it."

* * *

The revolver is exactly where Emma said it would be: bottom right desk drawer, under a stack of expired hunting permits. There are only five bullets left in the ammo case, but they only need three. She hopes.

Regina stays in the office until David comes in, and it's deeply gratifying to see that he still throws his guard up upon seeing her. "David."

He merely nods his head, comes further into the office and removes the shoulder holster he's taken to wearing, keeps it in hand. Swan never wears the thing; Regina makes a note to enforce—never mind. "What do you want, Regina?"

She starts to realize what a difference expectation makes. David on her doorstep, David at the stables—he's prepared for her. He's able to be kind. David on the defensive is neither kind nor charming. "Do you have the tools to score bullets?"

"I can get them," he says slowly, coming around to take a seat at the desk, sliding the holster and gun to the middle of the blotter.

When she holds out the box of bullets and the paper with the interwoven runes for light and order, he doesn't take it. "They will need this symbol scored into the tips. All of them."

David holds her gaze for a moment longer, then takes the box. "How soon?"

"If you could bring them by before noon tomorrow, that would be ideal."

He nods absently, and she gets the feeling that she isn't dismissed, yet. It makes her want to light up, send a puff of fire floating up just for kicks. Just for the rebellion of it. "I've taken my father's place in the council."

George's abandonment would of course turn his seat over to David. "Leaving Snow's seat unclaimed." And there, that flicker of  _not dismissed_ , again. So she laughs, because he really can't be that simple. "Surely you don't think that I would do it."

"Wouldn't you?"

Silly Charming, thinks he's clever. He'd said it himself: budgets aren't dragons, and political games aren't won with swords. "Even if I would—and I wouldn't—your peers would never allow it. What game are you playing, David? You're very bad at it."

He shrugs one shoulder, but there's redness rising in his cheeks. Looking at him makes her wonder, not for the first time, what Henry's father looked like. How he carried himself, who he was. "We can't have an even number."

"So cast Snow's vote on whichever the most bleeding-heart option is."

It's not the best choice of words, but he's a smart little prince, learns quickly and keeps his temper. "You really won't?"

"I will not."

David steeples his hands under his chin, appraises her. That he has the right to, now, stings in a way she didn't expect. "You are changing."

She rolls her eyes, pivots on her toes and walks out with her chin up.

* * *

Emma looks haggard, frankly, but she's smiling, and if she's here that means she's sleeping. "So she just handed them to you?"

The smile fades, a little. "Apparently I was conceived through the magic of the Lake. So they were mine to take? Also, she knows how to restore lost souls, so Aurora and Mulan—you could  _pretend_  to be interested, Regina."

Conceived through the magic of the Lake— _damn_  Swan, and damn Snow too. "All of them? All the weapons of Avalon?" The idea of  _all_  of Avalon—

Emma shrugs, awkwardly enough to stop Regina's train of thought. "I said I needed to defeat a witch. She gave me the swords. Didn't really ask much beyond that."

_Defeat_. This constant consideration for Regina's feelings about matricide makes no sense. "Not defeat. Kill. Stop being kind."

"We're talking about killing your mother. Shouldn't I be kind?"

"She is evil."

There is a long, weighted stretch of silence before Swan responds. "She's still your mother. And the fact that you've never resorted to killing her before means it's something that you don't want to do."

She hates Swan's calm response. She hates Swan's understanding. "I have." Her words are soft and they waver in the middle and she hates Swan's two fingers to the back of her hand. "I have. I thought I had. I cast—I thought she was dead."

Emma shifts her hand, lets those two fingers curl around Regina's index finger. "I've seen a lot, Regina. It's not easy to take down a parent, no matter..." Regina doesn't know what to do with this contact, this  _kindness_ ; all she can really do is accept it, silently. "I can't imagine it gets easier the second time around."

Third. Third time. She doesn't have the strength to say it.

"The important thing now is to not screw up."

And thus ends the moment, because  _how fucking dare she_. "I'm sorry, who has twenty-eight years of screwing up under their belt?"

All the softness disappears from Emma's face and that's what clues her in to her mistake. "Look, Regina, some of us spent the last thirty years in the real world, not a fucking fairy tale town in the middle of fucking Maine. Life happens. You need to be able to roll with the punches because shit  _will_  go wrong, and I need to know that you will not."

Anger is fear; she knows that better than anyone. So while Emma's eyes are hard and her words are biting, her hands are trembling just slightly. Regina lets go of her mug and slides her hands forward, turns her wrists so that Emma's fingers are resting in the center of her palms. "You would do well to remember who you're speaking to, Miss Swan," she says, putting everything of her old ways into it, playing it haughty and frigid and baiting.

It works. Emma's hands still, shoulders relax, there's even the hint of a grin to her lips. "Evil Queen?"

Regina nods, keeps the ice at her mouth but allows her eyes to warm. "Evil Queen," she confirms.

"Okay."

"Okay."

* * *

It's been two hours and David takes to swinging the sledgehammer at the wreckage of the bannister that used to span the assembly room. Regina lets the steady clicking rhythm—like claves through a megaphone—count time, keeps her eyes closed, her legs folded beneath her. The room is clear of all furniture; David took particular pleasure in destroying the charred bannister and now they must wait.

Wait  _more_ , and even though there is a plan and she knows all the steps, her mother is the one who taught her to dance.

She pushes, hard and with both hands, at the image of her mother before her, pushes her out of the way. She knows all the steps. She knows all the steps. Never mind how she learned: she knows all the steps.

When the first hint of a breeze slides through her hair, she lets out a murmured, "Thank God," and stands up, ignoring David's hand of assistance. There, maybe four feet off the ground, right behind where the bannister used to be, is a point of shimmering steel—more than a point—half a blade, a good foot and a half, broad and bright. Around it, a deep magenta haze starts to solidify, starts to spin and expand. Looking at it dizzies her, leaves her feeling unbalanced and unsettled. She closes her eyes and clenches her jaw and demands her own cooperation, because  _not now_.

Her eyes are closed so she misses the first stretch of dirty, worn, vaguely recognizable red-brown leather. David's gasp makes her open her eyes in time to see the arm as it comes through, the matted and limp blonde hair. Then Emma in her entirety is tumbling onto the floor and rolling to a stop and David's feet. His helping hand gets taken this time, but bless Swan's heart, she has no interest in a reunion moment.

Well, not  _much_. She is, after all, wearing a stupid, wondrous grin and saying something childish, like, "Did you see me cut a hole between two worlds? With  _Excalibur?_  How cool is that?" And if David's idiotic grin is at once adoring and enthusiastic and over-emotional—if, in fact, there's a grin at all—well.  _These are things you will not speak of_.

So instead Regina holds out the revolver by the barrel, calmly and silently, and Emma just looks at her for a whole heartbeat. "You look like shit."

It feels like solid ground after a month of quicksand, and Regina almost smiles. Almost. "I assure you, Miss Swan, that your appearance is similarly stimulating." She polishes it off with a scowl and an impatient flick of the hand with the revolver. "You do remember where to shoot?"

Emma rolls her eyes and takes the revolver, removes a sword from one of the scabbards crossed on her back. The blade is dark and broad and gently beveled, but the hilt shines white and pure, and something in Regina's stomach turns on itself in cognizant horror. "Shut up and take your damn Carnivore."

"Carnwennan."

The correction goes unheeded, as usual, as Emma turns to David. "Snow will be following in a minute, hopefully with Cora."

Regina points to the the tip of the sword. "As soon as they're through, you claim the sword, just as we discussed."

"I'm claiming it?" David asks.

She really shouldn't be surprised he catches the word. "Yes."

"I'm claiming  _Excalibur_." There's another grin, there, another idiotic, father-daughter  _we're knights of the round table_  grin. Regina turns away, fighting a sudden sting of nausea, and takes up her position on the left of the portal—just far enough so it can't reach for her again. David mirrors her on the right, and Emma—bruised, dirty, bedraggled, with her jeans hanging from her hips and loose on her thighs—plants her feet ten paces back from the opening, raises the gun and sets her shoulders.

It feels like asphalt after mud.

What comes through next is a swathe of pink, and denim, and enough blue velvet to swaddle a foal. For a moment, Regina doesn't even recognize them as two actual beings, only sees cloth and strangulation. That combination in itself should be sufficient to wake her, but it takes David stepping forward, David resolutely ignoring Snow's struggle to do his job and send Excalibur swinging, David closing the portal with a strangled cry, for Regina to wake up.

She wakes up and steps up, holds Carnwennan in both hands like a garrote and puts one knee to her mo—no, Cora, Cora Cora Cora, beautiful foreign angry entity Cora—puts one knee to Cora's back while she brings the blade up under that perfect chin, pushes it into that aging softness. "Get up."

Cora stills and Snow relaxes, removes her hands from Cora's arms and starts pushing backwards to get out from under her. She's slow, clumsy—too thin, too tired—scrabbling backwards on the tile; it takes David coming over, looping his free arm across her torso and pulling, for Snow to be out of the way. Some other time, she'll consider thanking him for being such a good soldier. Some other time; she has to keep Cora still.

Cora straightens her back and keeps her hands visible, supplicant, while she gets to her feet. But there's something to her tone: an eye-roll, a smirk. "Regina, dear. Is this how you greet the mother bringing you your heart's desire?" Yes, definitely a smirk, and if Emma's curling lip is anything to go by, an ugly one. "Or—oh, darling. You've gone soft again, haven't you? Left all your power behind. Come now, dear, drop the sword. Let me help you."

She closes her eyes and closes her ears and pulls a little harder on the sword. This isn't her mother. This isn't her mother. Her mother is dead. She just needs to keep Cora still, and then she will return to that life without a mother. She just needs to keep Cora still.

Stupid Swan—brilliant Swan—makes it about her, again. "Lady, do you ever stop talking?" she snaps, and cocks the hammer of the revolver. It echoes loudly—too loudly. It rattles around in Regina's head. It doesn't feel right at all.

Cora ignores Emma. "Let me help you, Regina. You know there's nothing I wouldn't do for you. Everything you've wanted, you can have. Unquestioned control. Snow White, dead. Your  _son_  again."

Everything goes cold.

"Yes, darling, your Savior there told me all about young Henry. A shared son, Regina? That simply won't do—unless—oh, dear. You haven't gone completely soft, have you? Given this… woman… your body? Your heart?" Her mother sounds perversely delighted, sounds like her seventh birthday and her wedding day rolled into a thick purple haze. Regina feels Carnwennan shift and slide along skin when Cora chuckles. "You always did like slumming it. Come now, darling. Lower the sword. You don't need her or her  _deviance_. He can be yours alone."

She tightens her grip. Her mother is dead. She has to keep Cora still.

"Darling—"

"Regina, step away," Emma says softly.  _Kindly_.

"—I know what a good mother you are to him—"

"Let me take the shot, Regina."

Regina tightens her pull on the sword. It's starting to bite at her fingertips, starting to sting in her veins, her nausea is only getting sharper, but it's necessary, now. She has to keep Cora still. She has to make sure the shots are good.

"—That you only want greatness for him—"

"Regina,  _move_."

Emma will understand. If not right away, then after; Emma will understand. She has to make sure the shots are good. "Take it," she whispers.

"—Don't you see, dear? You were meant for so much more than  _here_ , than  _them_. Lower the sword—"

"Take the shot, Emma." She's never felt so certain and it is a beautiful thing. To  _know_. She has to make sure the shots are good. It all was meant for this.

"—And it can be the three of us, untouchable—"

Stupid Swan isn't shooting, her mouth is still moving, and Regina just looks at her, tries to get her to understand like she somehow always could in the diner. In the dream. Was it a dream? She  _has_  to make sure the shots are good.

"Will you  _shut_  the fuck  _up_?"

Oh, Emma. Stupid Emma.

"Stupid girl," Cora hisses, and her fingers, her arthritic elegant manicured fingers, twitch towards the gun. It wiggles slightly, but that's all.

Emma's mouth shifts; her lower lip curls just a bit more, but she's good at this game and it's gone a moment later. "Take the shot," Regina whispers. She has to make sure the shots are good.

The impact to her face is so sudden that, for a moment, she thinks that Swan actually understood. Swan understood and it can be simple, now. She can be quiet. Her right hand relaxes, loosens its grip on the hilt, gets caught and yanked and she's off her feet. When she hits the ground, ass then elbow then shoulder blade, and pain spikes all the way through to her hands, she feels her empty palms, the blood from her left fingertips. She tastes blood on her lip and somehow understands: she's fucked it up.

Of course Emma didn't understand. Of course they didn't account for what Carnwennan could do to  _her_. Of course Cora would take advantage of any lapse in synchrony. Of course Cora's standing over her with the sword in hand and triumph on her face. Of course she's underestimated her mother, because who needs power when there is  _love_?

Of course Emma rolls with the punches, and the moment Regina is aware of what's happened, the revolver fires. And of course Emma likes to play with guns, and she likes to remember the cadence of words, and nothing would fuck this up for her:  _Thou shalt not suffer a witch to think. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to speak. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live_.

The shots are spaced out by gaps of two steady breaths. The first goes straight into Cora's forehead but doesn't come out. The force of it snaps Cora's head back, exposing that lightly-bleeding soft space under her jaw. The second shot goes there, just as they'd talked about, through the base of the tongue and up through the center of the brain, and comes out, along with a portion of Cora's skull.

The third shot goes to the heart and stays there but Cora doesn't fall. Cora does not fall, even though half of her hair is gone, half of her skull is gone, Regina feels blood and something heavier falling on her sleeve and she can't she won't she can't can't can't—

"Regina, the sword!"

Damn Swan. Cora hasn't fallen and Regina scrambles to her feet, seizes Carnwennan—the white-hilt, the witch-killer—out of Cora's grasp and when was the last time she used a sword? Never. It doesn't matter. The shots are good.

Cora's eyes blink at her, and it's almost enough. She almost thinks  _mother_. She almost thinks  _love_. She does think  _these are lessons passed from mother to child_  and she does think  _so what's keeping you safe_ and that's enough. When she strikes, when she swings Carnwennan flat through the air like a baseball bat, it whistles so high and sweet that she thinks of birdsong.

The head drops to the ground, then the body, and she tastes blood and bile in her mouth and her mother is dead on the floor. Her mother is dead on the floor in two pieces—three. Three pieces, because there is a chunk of skull and brain two feet back.

Oh, God, there is brain and blood on her clothes, she's wearing her mother's  _brain_.

She wants the floor, she wants darkness and no dreams, but instead she gets Emma, leather and pine and support. "Regina. It's done. It's done. Don't look at her, look at me. Look at me, it's done."

She does what she's told because she's always been one for obedience. Her hands are shaking and she tries to stop it, to shake it out and breathe herself back into—into what? Sobriety? Normalcy? She's just beheaded her mother.

_It's done_.

"Snow," she chokes out, and her lips recognize the name and how it's been so long. "Snow, go to Henry. Take Excalibur and stay with him." She doesn't look, but she knows Snow looks to Emma for confirmation, because she feels Emma nod. "We have to burn her—the body. We have to burn the body, dump the ashes in running water. David, get your truck. And a tarp." They leave and then there's nowhere else to look but at Cora. Her mother's body, her mother's blood. "Sh—The body needs to be dismembered."

Emma reaches for Carnwennan but Regina doesn't let go, can't let go. It's stinging at her wrists and rolling in her stomach. She just wants darkness. "Regina, don't fight me on this."

"I have to."

"You did. Okay? You did. This is my part."

She hates Emma for being merciful, for being  _kind_. "There's a particular—you have to be sure to—the hands, from the rest of the body, and separate from each other. Arms, separate. At the tendons. The pelvis—"

Emma says nothing when Regina turns and retches, spits up nothing but saliva and acid and faint traces of blood. Pressure at her shoulder brings her upright again, and Emma puts two fingers to her chin, lifts her face, wipes at her mouth with what looks like part of that ratty tank top. She looks, finds the torn edge of the shirt and the top of Emma's right hip exposed—and it's green with bruises, the bone is so sharply visible, there are so many questions to ask—and all she can do is sneer. "When was the last time you washed?" she grumbles.

Emma laughs. Out loud, and loudly, and as purely as in the diner, and it's wrong, so wrong, her mother is on the floor without a head but  _laughter_. Regina loves laughter. Regina's always loved laughter.

She hands over Carnwennan and goes and sits on top of the bannister wreckage, facing the wall, puts her head in her hands. The sword whistles high on every swing, and Emma only asks questions twice, only says the names of body parts, doesn't say  _the body_  or  _Cora_  or  _your mother_. David comes in with the tarp and there are wet thumps on plastic, wet and rhythmic thumps. Two people working in time, in silence. Her stomach rolls again and she presses her forehead to her knees, hears the rhythm fade out. Three more hits, syncopated and full of  _squish_ , and then the rustle of plastic, swish of nylon cord. She just wants darkness.

Two fingers touch her elbow and then Emma and David are hauling the blue tarp out the door, neither saying a word. She wonders if Emma's ever killed anyone before. She wonders if David has ever dismembered a body, cleaned up the mess. There is blood all over the tile floor; it will set into the grout. She knows she said  _no magic_  but this is for good. This is for Henry. This is for the smallest whispers of golden ash at the stables and for the smooth-cut marble tomb at the cemetery and for this small, aching bit of hope that's settling between her lungs.

It doesn't take much: a flicker of fingers, a bit of will. The flames burn blue, with only the slightest white halo, and she sends them after the blood, lets them seek it out in the pockets of grout and gaps in the tile. They burn blue and bright and quickly. In thirty seconds, there's only the negative they've left in her gaze.

Emma returns, tugs on the sleeve of her shirt, but she doesn't turn, not yet. She just needs a moment to be sure it's done. Just a moment, just to be sure. She just needs a moment.

* * *

Ruby leads them up the stairs of the B&B to the first two rooms, where two massive copper washtubs sit in the middle of each floor. "David said the bathwater has to burn, too," she says, by way of explanation, and Regina can only nod, can only look away from Emma's unwavering gaze.

"Yes. And our clothes." She won't think of the blood on her shirt and on her shoes and in her hair and whatever else might be with that blood. She can't help but look at Emma's jacket—sliced up, stained, blood-spattered—and feel hollow.

Ruby nods, smiles again at Emma. "I'll pick up clothes for both of you, from your mom's."

She's about to cut in that she needs no clothes from  _Snow White_  when there's a perfectly good set in her office before she remembers. Emma keeps staring at her, even while she talks to Ruby. "I think there's a pair of black jeans that'll fit Regina, in my dresser. Thanks, Ruby."

There are two large paper shopping bags next to each tub, and she watches Emma's shoulders as she strips out of the scabbards and then the jacket, dropping it into a bag in one smooth motion like it doesn't hurt. She thinks she's done underestimating Emma Swan.

She turns to go into the other room, lifts her wrist to start unbuttoning the cuffs of her shirt when she sees something solid clinging to the first opalescent button, something solid and red-gray. She can't even figure out what sound comes out of her mouth, but it feels high and keening and it  _hurts_ , and she's frozen with her fingers hovering, trembling, over that red-gray solid something.

There are thin, rough fingers—bitten nails and minor cuts all over them—pushing her hand aside, slowly settling on her wrist and unbuttoning the cuff with no hesitation, no pause for the red-gray solid something. When the four buttons are free, Emma rolls the sleeve carefully, makes it so Regina can take off the shirt without fear of touching something solid or red or gray. She does the other sleeve without a word, examines the rest of the shirt and then the outfit. Regina says nothing, just keeps her eyes on the wall just past Emma's head, says nothing and makes no sound when Emma reaches forward and undoes her belt, tugs it forward and off and drops it into the bag.

"Okay," is all Emma says, and then she's gone to the other room, and while there's still energy in her shaking limbs, Regina closes the door and strips off all the horrible clothes and pushes them down into the bag and then, finally, sinks into the water.

If she thinks about staying down, if she thinks about staying down and breathing in and keeping still—

_These are things you will not speak of_.

* * *

She lights the pyre. She lights it by hand, literally; lets her fingernails grow into five points of blue-white flame. She lowers her fingertips to the scrap wood, to the dried hay twists stuffed in as kindling, to the wheat chaff serving as tinder.

Most of the town is watching. She only dimly recognizes their names, their faces, the ways she's made them suffer. The important faces are logged: David, Ruby, Emma, all standing to her right. Gold, Granny, Belle, across the green, staying back. Snow, Henry: absent, safe and away in Snow's apartment. That her son is safe with Snow White while she completes these multiple steps to matricide is twisted in ways she can't comprehend, can't hold in her mind. Not alongside light and wild and dark and orders of magnitude and the seven protection runes she'd painted on the soles of Henry's sneakers.

The pyre catches quickly but it burns slowly; it takes almost an hour for even one log to start to crumble into ash. Any modern accelerant will char, not immolate, and so she settles in to wait, sets her knees, her shoulders, the space between her feet.

This, she can hold: the licks of flame that crack up against the black sky and the way the fire smells sweet and sweaty, like soccer fields in the summer.

Two fingers hook into the soft bend of her elbow and she turns her head towards Emma, keeps her eyes on the fire. "It will keep burning. Let's go see him."

She almost says  _no_. Not when she's just washed her mother's blood from her hands, not when she's just lit her mother's body on fire. Not when there's still the hum of magic between her eyes and beneath her tongue. Not when she's still waiting for an explosion to take her into darkness and  _quiet_  again.

But Emma gave Henry his smile, and that particular scrunch to his nose when he concentrates, and their eyes are set the same, and Henry is  _safe._ And somewhere in the very bottom of her lungs is the small, slow flutter of freedom. So she smiles, feels how it stretches at her cheeks and pinches at her eyes, and nods. "Okay," she whispers, and it's Henry's smile shining back at her, Henry's smile and Emma's eyes.

And then there are cold, heavy hands closing on both of her forearms, and Henry's smile is gone and Emma is shouting and reaching for the sword strapped to her back. "The hell is this?"

Slowly, slowly, she looks to either side and sees Dopey and Doc and hardness in their eyes and small green pins on the lapels of their coats, small green pins in the shape of acanthus leaves.

_Oh_.

That's all it comes down to: one moment to look, to understand, and then just the smallest sigh of acceptance. The smallest sound of relief. She doesn't even bother to look up when Maurice and Mitchell step forward, when they label her  _usurper_  and  _murderer_  and  _prisoner of the seven kingdoms_. She just keeps looking at Emma, and waiting for her to understand.

And this time, this time Emma does. This time she stops struggling against David's restraining arm, this time she just meets Regina's eyes and this time she understands. Regina sees it happen, in the same way Henry's face opens up when he puts all the pieces of a puzzle together.  Emma understands, and Regina smiles. Smiles and gathers up that tiny flutter from the bottom of her lungs, holds it close and tight and teaches it to stay down, to keep still.

_These are things you will not speak of_.

She has to stay down. She has to keep still.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End Part One


End file.
